Christopher Hitchens has made a career out of offending polite society. Among his greatest hits are his observation that women aren't funny, his pooh-poohing of the Haditha massacre, and his defense of the jailed Holocaust denier David Irving, who he hailed as a "great historian." More recently, Hitchens has volunteered himself as the licker of Wolfowitz's comb, claiming that the corrupt World Bank president "did nothing wrong."

Hitchens has cast these seemingly untenable positions as "contrarian," lending himself not only an air of intellectual bravado, but a veneer of integrity as well. Despite his myriad personal flaws and political contradictions, Hitchens has managed to appear principled by trafficking in opinions that consistently outrage conservatives and liberals alike. He poses as a maverick, an intellectually macho literary gun-slinger who loves nothing more than provoking the indignant howls of the madding crowd. For Hitchens, everything is sacred, and therefore, everything is fair game.

Those who have followed the trajectory of Hitchens' career knew it was only a matter of time before he set his sights on religion. What better way to piss off (and on) the masses than to unleash a full-frontal assault on God himself?

Hitchens spares no sacred cows in his latest work. He blasts religion as a form of child abuse, claims Jesus Christ never lived, and declares that those who give their children bar mitzvahs are "planning your and my destruction and the destruction of all hard-won human attainments." The requisite attacks on Islam, so satisfying to his newfound neocon pals, are also featured at length.

Hitchens' book might be mean-spirited and even bigoted; little more than a barely legible screed larded with predictable arguments and a scattershot of pretentious literary references, but who can say its author is unprincipled? This is contrarianism, right?

Please.

"God Is Not Great" represents little more than the disingenous posturings of a certified fraudmeister who has openly cavorted with the most reactionary elements of the Christian right. If Hitchens had any principles at all -- if he truly feared the cultural and political consequences of the encroachment of religion into public life -- he would have used his still-considerable influence to support organizations and causes that shore up the wall between church and state and which defend the rights of non-believers. Instead, Hitchens has done exactly the opposite.

In the Fall of 2005, Hitchens gladly accepted the invitation of the Family Research Council to speak before its Witherspoon Fellows. Hitchens subsequently regaled an audience of young Christian right cadres with excerpts from his book, "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America." For attending Hitchens' lecture and participating in several similar events, the FRC's Witherspoon Fellows received academic credit for study at Pat Robertson's Regent University, a school that has placed 150 of its graduates in Bush administration posts.

Presumably Hitchens was aware of the mission of the James Dobson-founded Family Research Council. How could such an intellectual giant be unaware of the FRC's charge to "promote[] the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free, and stable society?" How could Hitchens have missed the FRC's many "Justice Sunday" rallies staged at mega-churches and telecast across America to advance the confirmation of George W. Bush's most theocracy-minded judicial picks? (To my knowledge, these rallies occured well after happy hour). And how could Hitchens have been ignorant to the FRC's vitriolic crusade to ban abortion and undermine gay rights?

Regarding FRC President Tony Perkins' ties to white supremacists, I would like to paraphrase Scripture and say, forgive Hitchens for he knows not what the hell he is doing. My well-publicized report detailing how Perkins once purchased the phone bank list of former Klan leader David Duke for the price of $82,500 and how he headlined a 2001 fundraiser for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens had only been out for a few months. Maybe Hitchens was too busy dancing with Wolfowitz to read it.

But there is no excuse for Hitchens' hypocrisy. With the release of "God Is Not Great," Hitchens owes his readers an explanation for his appearance at the Family Research Council, the nerve center of a theocratic movement determined to weaken the foundations of constitutional democracy. Hitchens must explain why he accepted the FRC's invitation to speak and whether he was paid for his appearance.

While awaiting Hitchens' response, I will pray that in the future his version of the Straight Talk Express designates a driver.

Yes, our man Hitchens is a first class political Svengali. Writing in the September/October 2000 online edition of Mother Jones, in a scathing article on the Clinton-Gore Administration, the contrarian soothsayer pointed out and then predicted,

"I'm sure that there are people reading this and saying to themselves: "Yeah, but what about the Supreme Court and the Christian Coalition? What about a woman's right to choose?" Those were exactly the things that had liberals waving their arms in panic when Ronald Reagan won in 1980, except that back then they expressed concern about matters like poverty and racism and the arms race and human rights as well. If you look back and think about it, you may agree that neither Reagan nor Bush instituted a microsecond of school prayer or declared a single actual fetus to be a citizen, and that neither would Dole have, and most certainly will this junior Bush."

Well, let's see. We know that the Supreme Court made a mockery of the Constitution with their decision for Bush vs. Gore. Even Hitchens has since ceded that point.

Then, there is the Faith-based initiative plan which fudges the line of the separation of Church and State.

But most significant of all, however, is the Partial-birth Abortion Ban, passed by Congress in early 2002, signed into law by President Bush and upheld by an increasingly radical Supreme Court. At the 2000 Republican Convention then-candidate Bush openly promised that he would sign such a bill. I guess the Hitchster missed that little red-flag!

Additionally, there is the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The House passed it in 2001 (died in the Democratic controlled Senate) and again in 2002. The legislation's intention is to create separate legal rights for the fetus. If signed into law by President Bush, it would elevate the legal status of a fetus under federal law to that of a natural born person.

It seems as if liberals are a bit more clairvoyant than the usually unkempt Mr. Hitchens.

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